100 years since battle for Dar

One hundred years ago, British forces took Dar es Salaam from German colonial power.

The British first attacked Dar in 1914, when their navy bombarded the governor’s house and destroyed the railway lines.

But it wasn’t until early September, 1916, when general Jan Smuts — who later became Prime Minister of South Africa — claimed the city for the British.

It was a ‘protracted siege’ but eventually British forces ‘moved in unopposed’ say historians James Brennan and Andrew Burton, in their book Dar es Salaam, Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis.

In Tanzania, both sides of World War One — the British and the German — were fought largely by African soldiers from across the region.

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